Feb 22, 2018 - ... Public Health and Food Safety for the Committee on Development on transparent and accountable managem
European Parliament 2014-2019
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
2018/2003(INI) 22.2.2018
DRAFT OPINION of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety for the Committee on Development on transparent and accountable management of natural resources in developing countries: the case of forests (2018/2003(INI)) Rapporteur for opinion (*): Kateřina Konečná (*)
Associated committee – Rule 54 of the Rules of Procedure
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SUGGESTIONS The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety calls on the Committee on Development, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution: 1.
Notes that deforestation and forest degradation are the second leading cause of global warming1;
2.
Calls on the Commission to honour the EU’s international commitments, inter alia those made within the framework of COP21, the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), the New York Declaration on Forests and the Sustainable Development Goal to halt deforestation by 2020;
3.
Calls for the EU to maintain its commitment to step up ongoing negotiations on the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements; stresses the need to ensure that these agreements are in line with international law and commitments concerning environmental protection, human rights and sustainable development, and that they bring about adequate measures for the conservation and sustainable management of forests, including the protection of the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples;
4.
Calls for the EU to create, as a supplementary element of Voluntary Partnership Agreements, follow-up legislation on such agreements along the lines of the EU Timber Regulation which includes both companies and financial institutions; notes that the EU has regulated the supply chains of timber, fish and conflict minerals, but has not yet regulated any forest risk agricultural commodity supply chains; urges the Commission and the Member States to step up their efforts to implement the Timber Regulation, in order to better gauge its effectiveness;
5.
Calls on the Commission to ensure the coherence of and to boost synergies between the common agricultural policy (CAP) and other EU policies, and to ensure that they are conducted in a manner consistent with programmes aimed at combating deforestation in developing countries, including REDD+; calls on the Commission to ensure that the CAP reform does not lead, directly or indirectly, to further deforestation and that it supports the goal of putting an end to global deforestation; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that the environmental problems relating to deforestation are also addressed in the light of the objectives set by the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020, which should be an integral part of the Union’s external action in this area;
6.
Calls for the EU to establish a binding regulatory framework to ensure that all agricultural commodity importers’ supply chains are traceable back to the origin of the raw material;
7.
Calls on the Commission to press ahead with developing an EU action plan on deforestation and forest degradation, which would include concrete regulatory measures to ensure that no supply chains or financial transactions linked to the EU result in
1
https://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/what-redd
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deforestation or forest degradation.
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